by Silas House
They have been gone almost three months but it feels like ages, like everything has changed, even though every single thing is exactly the same. They pass the Dollar General where the parking lot is always full, and the Cumberland Valley Church of Life with its short white steeple and blue door. A yellow sign sits on cinder blocks out front. The smaller letters at the bottom used to spell out asher sharp, pastor but they have been replaced with the name Caleb Carey. The sign’s message today is repent sinner for lo the last days are nigh.
They pass pastures and hills and little groves of oak trees where Asher knows the shade is the best kind of sweet-smelling cool. Cows stand in ponds with still, brown water.
There are old farmhouses and new brick houses and trailers with no underpinning. A woman hanging clothes out on the line, her skirt flapping around her legs. An old man picking tomatoes and holding them in a line on his other arm against his chest. An old woman sweeping her front porch, which is covered in that scratchy green indoor-outdoor carpet. Asher will remember all of this.
They pass people on the side of the road selling green beans and jars of honey and collards from the tailgates of their pickups or on folding tables. One woman has laid out a bunch of clothes to sell right on the shoulder of the road. She’s sitting in the shade in a pink plastic chair, smoking a cigarette and staring with menace at every passing car.
Always there is the Cumberland River alongside the road, twisting and curving along with them. Asher recalls a time that he and Justin were walking along the river in the cool of the day and they saw a huge, straight beam of golden light falling from the trees and onto the water. Justin had asked him why the air always felt so much better down by the river. Asher had told him it was because of how the light filtered through the leaves and because water made everything better. “That’s why people always go to it, any chance they get,” he had said. He would give anything to have that day back.
“Why don’t you just let me out up here at the store?” Justin asks, one more desperate attempt. Already Asher can see the tall sign, hoskins’ grocery, above the trees, even though the building is still out of sight. “Cherry will probably be working,” Justin says. “She’ll watch me until Granny comes.”
Luke and Asher keep their eyes on the road and don’t reply, as if they haven’t even heard him. Asher can’t bear to speak. Not right now. Luke has left the radio on low and Asher can just barely hear Jason Isbell singing about not chopping wood. Shady eases up between the seats and puts his wet nose against Asher’s hand like he’s reminding him he’s there.
Luke drives on by Hoskins’ Grocery and Asher watches it go past, just a little rectangle made out of concrete blocks with a row of red buggies out front, a woman carrying her baby on her hip as she comes out the sliding glass doors, and it’s just a flash but he is sure he sees Cherry and Kathi standing at the side door by the stockroom, smoking cigarettes.
There’s a stoplight just past the grocery where they can go straight on into Ashland City or turn left and go back out into the country where Zelda lives. Luke slows and gets in the turning lane but they’re stopped right beside a long golden Cadillac with two old women with wigged-up hair, sitting there jawing away. They are the kinds of old ladies who still go to the beauty salon once a week to get their hair done.
Then one of the ladies looks over. Asher sees the moment on her face when she recognizes the Jeep. Asher knows that old women like this watch the news all the time. She leans against the window so she can see better, peering over her eyeglasses. Asher can tell when she recognizes him and she’s hollering to her friend and searching all about for something, probably her cell phone. The old lady driving gets so excited she runs the red light.
“She’s recognized you, Asher,” Luke says, just like he’s saying It sure is a nice day today.
“Don’t matter now,” Asher says. He sounds like a version of himself, like somebody else playing him in a movie.
Then they are in woods again and the trees are close, hunching down over the Jeep as they pass underneath. Shady is cocking his head to the side the way he does when he hears something far off in the distance before anyone else does. There’s a hush, too. Even the radio seems to be going quieter.
The car sails down into the rolling hills and the Cumberland is so close he can smell the mossy logs and the old ferns on its banks. Asher is still holding his brother’s hand.
Suddenly he realizes that Justin has unlatched his seat belt and is slipping between the seats so he can latch his arms around Asher’s shoulders, his wet face pressed against his father’s neck.
3
Just before they reach Zelda’s, Luke pulls over on the shoulder of the road in a thick shade of tulip poplars. He turns off the engine and they sit there in a world made of birdcall. Justin’s holding on to Asher tight, his little arms squeezing around Asher’s neck, his warm breathing right in the nape of his father’s neck, not moving, not saying anything.
I can’t do this, Asher thinks. I can’t.
But he knows that he must. He has to. Justin didn’t ask to be born into any of this mess, yet they’ve put him here.
Heat gathers in the cab of the Jeep even though they’re sitting in a deep green shade. The birds are incredibly loud. Ironweed and goldenrod grow in clumps all down the side of the road, barely moving in the heat, their purple and yellow blossoms shining like lights.
Asher knows the police cruisers will be there any time now.
“Go on to Zelda’s,” he tells Luke. He doesn’t say out loud that he doesn’t want Justin to see him get arrested, but Luke knows.
Asher holds on to Justin as they drive down the hill. They pass over the crackling gravel to Zelda’s house and Asher feels he is leaving his own body. He feels that he can look down and see his son, the most important thing that ever happened to him. He is looking down and telling him goodbye.
The long lace of the willow tree rests on the windshield—shush, it goes against the glass—and then Luke turns off the ignition and they sit there with the engine clicking and the breeze moving into the cab of the Jeep while Justin remains latched on.
Asher hears a redbird calling: birdie birdie birdie.
Asher climbs out and the boy scrambles out from behind the seat to stand close to him. Asher squats down there beside the Jeep beneath the shade of the willow tree with Zelda’s house on the other side of the vehicle. He knows she’ll be out soon. Soon as she sees Asher’s Jeep she will rush out to get Justin, even if she fears Asher now, although he doesn’t think she ever would. And any minute those police cruisers will be here. He can’t let Justin see that. He has to hurry.
Asher takes hold of Justin’s shoulders.
“It might not be as bad as we think, buddy,” Asher says.
“I’ll talk her out of charging you. She won’t do it if I ask her to. I know she won’t.” His words are rat-a-tat-tat, the tears streaming down his face from his red eyes. “They can’t do anything to you if she doesn’t want them to.”
Asher isn’t so sure about that. He figures the state will do its own thing, no matter what. Maybe even the feds, for all he knows. Right now Asher has to tell his boy goodbye in case it’s a long, long time before he lays eyes on him again.
“No matter what happens, don’t ever hate. You hear me?” Asher says. “No matter what?”
Justin nods, hard. He’s so little, too little for nine, too little for how big that mind is. Justin wears his bright orange Key West tee shirt he had insisted on buying, which makes him look even smaller since it’s too big. Asher feels that sense of peace and goodness that radiates from him. He’s like a balm.
“And always believe. Try your best to not lose that.”
Asher is barely conscious of Luke standing near them. He may or may not be telling Asher that they have to go. Asher may or may not hear sirens in the distance. He can’t be sure. He’s outside himself.
He holds his son one moment longer, kisses his forehead. He knows that he has to go, right
now. Over and over in his mind he tells Justin how much he loves him and he knows his son can hear him.
“Go on,” Asher yells to him, pushing him toward Zelda’s porch, and he jumps back into the Jeep, and then they are bumping back up the driveway in reverse. He watches as Zelda runs from the porch and collapses over Justin, covering him up in her body, kissing the top of his head.
The sirens.
Zelda takes Justin’s arm and is trying to pull him into the house but he won’t budge. He’s trying to run toward the Jeep. She knows what’s going to happen and she doesn’t want him to see, either, so she grabs him up and although he is kicking and screaming in her arms like a catfish on the hook, she holds on. Good old Zelda. Asher knows Justin will be safe as long as she is in this world.
Thank you thank you thank you, he says to her in his mind.
And then Luke is jerked out of the driver’s side first and then their hands are on Asher, two big old troopers at the same time, right there at the top of the driveway where the gravel meets the highway. They throw Asher to the ground, in the grass near the drive. He breathes in its green scent—Tennessee—and feels the sun on the back of his head and he is vaguely aware of a silver pain in his spine as the cop’s knee digs into his back while he latches the cuffs too tightly around Asher’s wrists. People are hollering: He’s unarmed. We got him! And walkie-talkies are crackling and somewhere far off he can hear someone hollering his name.
Asher closes his eyes and all he can say is what saved him over and over all these years. “Justin,” he says.
Epilogue: The Everything
Justin spends most of his time down here by the Cumberland River. It’s the only place he can think straight, seems like. He lies back and watches the light coming through the lime-green leaves. He listens to the birds. Watches the water. Shady is always right beside him.
Sometimes he hears something scampering through the leaves and brush and he thinks it might be Roscoe coming back to him after all this time. Any day now he might dart out of those woods like nothing ever happened and they’ll pick right back up where they left off the way Asher and Luke were able to do.
You never know. It might happen. Anything’s possible.
When they lived in Key West Justin thought the Everything lived in the ocean. Sometimes he thought the ocean was God. But if the Everything lives anywhere, it’s in a river. Because the river moves along and touches every little thing on its way. And he thinks the Everything would be quiet like a river. Even still sometimes. The ocean is always moving and noisy. The sky’s always changing. But rivers are always there, even when the water has moved on. You’ve got to find the Everything wherever you are. That’s what Justin believes. And that’s why God is the Everything, because there is God in oceans and rivers and dogs and little boys. In Evonas and Lydias and Bells and Ashers and Lukes. In iguanas and frangipani and bougainvillea.
Justin writes things like this in his letters and postcards and emails to Evona and she doesn’t seem to think he’s crazy. He still hasn’t said this sort of thing out loud, but if he ever sees her in person again, he’ll be able to. Because she’s read the words written down, and she keeps talking to him. She even says that she thinks he’s right most of the time. When he calls her from his grandmother’s house they don’t talk about that kind of stuff. But maybe someday they will.
He might even try to say some of those things to his mother sometime. Maybe not the God stuff. She’d never get that. But the weird stuff he thinks sometimes, maybe that. She’s getting better.
When his mother first saw him she wept like he had never seen her cry before and said she thought she had lost him forever. She’s different now. Not all the way there, but changing, rolling along. Partly because she thought she lost him but also because his grandmother doesn’t take her shit anymore. She stands up to his mother now. That’s what Lydia needs, someone to look her in the eye and say, That’s enough now. That’s what his father did, he sees now, with the church, and with her. And that’s what his grandmother has done now, too. All of this could have been different if both of his parents had taken a breath. That’s what he does when he gets upset.
They’re not going to keep his father in there forever. He knows this. His grandmother won’t let that happen. And Evona says she will do everything in her power to get him out of there. Even his mother has said she will go testify for him, if that’s what Justin wants. Yes yes yes, he says. You have to.
One night she came in and sat on the edge of his bed. Shady raised his head and perked his ears at her, thumped his tail against the mattress a couple times. She sat there without saying a word, her back to Justin, her eyes on his open window, but he felt like by being there she was telling him that she knew it wasn’t all his father’s fault, that she had had plenty to do with it, too, and that she was sorry, and that she hoped he could forgive her someday.
Forgiveness is the easiest thing in the world, Justin thinks. All you do is just decide to do it, and then it’s done. Instantly you feel better, like pushing aside a quilt that is too heavy for sleeping. Forgetting is the hard part.
The thing Justin can never say to anybody is that he’s glad it all happened the way it did. Otherwise he’d never have known Evona and Bell. He wouldn’t have Shady. He’d never have known Key West and all of its special sounds and smells. His father would’ve never found his Uncle Luke. He never would have seen Olivia Street and the frangipani tree in Bell’s courtyard. He would have never laid eyes on an iguana or a bougainvillea.
He still says those words in his head when he gets scared or sad or when he starts to think his father might never get out of that jail. Olivia, bougainvillea, iguana. He always says each of them three times and then he’s calmed down:
Olivia Bougainvillea Iguana
Olivia Bougainvillea Iguana
Olivia Bougainvillea Iguana
That’s how he prays.
Acknowledgments
On page 59, the line “Sometimes the hurt is so deep deep deep” that Asher finds on the postcard is from the Patty Griffin song “Rain,” which appears on the 2002 album 100 Kisses.
On page 242, Bell says, “Everything that is, is holy,” which is a phrase popularized by Thomas Merton and coined by James Agee, who was inspired by William Blake’s adage that “everything that lives is holy.”
On page 303, Bell borrows a line from the same-titled William Wordsworth sonnet when she says, “The world is too much with us.”
I am thankful to early readers Alice Hale Adams, Kevin Gardner, Amy Greene, Karen Salyer McElmurray, Jennifer Reynolds, and Aimee Zaring. Kathi Whitley was a guiding force throughout the writing of this novel. This book could not have been written without Annie Dillard and Bob Richardson, who helped me to understand the spirit of Key West and connected me with the generosity of the Studios of Key West. I cannot thank Lee Smith enough, for everything. Michael Croley offered advice and support for which I am grateful. My thanks for research help goes to my dear friends Donavan Cain, Carla Gover, Donna Birney, and Martha Copeland. I am indebted to the kindness and artistry of Jim James and My Morning Jacket.
I could not keep writing without the support of all the independent booksellers, librarians, teachers, and readers who have been so good to me through the years. I appreciate the support of friends and colleagues within Berea College and Spalding University’s MFA program. My agent, Joy Harris, believed in this book from the beginning and stuck by me all the way. Thanks to Adam Reed for his great work. The wonderful editing of Kathy Pories made this book shine; I am indebted to her and the hardworking team at Algonquin Books.
This book stands in memory of all the good dogs I have known, particularly Rufus. It would not exist without my family, both blood and chosen; you know who you are. Endless gratitude to my daughters, Olivia and Cheyenne, who taught me how to write this novel by teaching me how to be a father. Jason, every word is for you.
Silas House is the author of five novels, including the New York Times bestse
ller A Parchment of Leaves. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and a former commentator for NPR’s All Things Considered. House is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers and is the winner of the E. B. White Award, the Nautilus Award, the Appalachian Book of the Year, the Hobson Medal for Literature, and other honors.
Visit us at Algonquin.com to step inside the world of Algonquin Books. You can discover our stellar books and authors on our newly revamped website that features
Book Excerpts
Downloadable Discussion Guides
Author Interviews
Original Author Essays
And More!
Follow us on twitter.com/AlgonquinBooks
Like us on facebook.com/AlgonquinBooks
Follow us on AlgonquinBooks.tumblr.com
Published by
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
Workman Publishing
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 2018 by Silas House.
All rights reserved.
“Honest Man,” lyrics by Jim James, © 2001 Jim James.
This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
eISBN 978-1-61620-829-5